But the women who flew fighters and bombers for the war effort have all but been forgotten.

Meet Julie Ledbetter and Ellen Evans, two Peninsula residents who piloted bombers during World War II.

It was 1942, and the American armed forces were struggling because there just weren't enough male pilots to go around. Since the nation entered the war in December, 1941, the demand for qualified pilots more than tripled, soaring from 30,000 fliers to 100,000.

By assigning women pilots to non-combat missions - such as ferrying planes from factories to air bases and towing targets for gunnery practice - the military freed men for combat action.

So the Women Aircraft Service Pilots, a civilian support group serving under military orders and discipline, was formed.

Women volunteered by the thousands - students and teachers, nurses and housewives, doctors and flight attendants - all with some flight experience.

Because of their flying skills, Ledbetter and Evans - both South Carolina natives - were among the first women accepted into the WASP.

"I kind of grew up in an airplane," Ledbetter remembers. "I would rather be with airplanes than dogs. I spent more time with planes than bicycles."

Ledbetter showed her love of flying early.

When she was only about knee high, she says, she watched her mother take off in a plane for a quick loop around an early airfield.

"When the plane landed, I was bawling," she recalls. "My mother thought I was worried about her. I just wanted to go up in the airplane."

Evans began flying when one of the boarders at her mother's rooming house offered lessons for the price of the fuel alone.

She and Ledbetter were among about 25,000 hopefuls who applied to the WASP program.

Only 1,830 were accepted.

Of those, only 1,074 graduated.

And 38 died.

Ledbetter said she knew eight of those women who gave their lives for their country.

"When you fly, it's going to happen sometimes, and you just try to find out what they did wrong," she says.

"You've got to figure a certain number are going to get it, and they knew that from the start. You just hope you're not going to be the one. And I think no one thought they were."

Some of Evans' friends died, too, including one woman, a former flying teacher, who'd been lucky or skilled enough to survive the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. She'd been teaching a student that Sunday morning, Dec. 7, when waves of Japanese planes appeared suddenly over Oahu. Diving to safety then, she later died on active duty with the WASP.

The WASP pilots never had to combat Japanese Zeros or German Messerschmidts in their service.

But there was still bad weather and bad luck, bad planes being ferried on their way back for repairs, even bad shooting.

One of the WASP jobs, for example, was towing targets for gunners on the ground to shoot at in anti-aircraft practice. Occasionally, it was hard for the pilots to tell which plane the rookies were aiming at.

"They'd call down and say, `I'm pulling the plane, not pushing it.' They'd come in with bullet holes through the planes," Evans says.

Despite the danger, there was a lot of fun, too. Evans recalls playing tricks on Air Force pilots who ferried the WASP women back to the airplane factories.

She and her friends would dart to the rear of a plane, pitching its nose suddenly skyward and startling the pilot. Then the pilot would usually retaliate by snapping the plane's tail sideways, throwing the women against the inside of the fuselage.

But when they weren't playing pranks on each other, the men and women pilots would often go out on dates.

"We were supposed to date only officers, though," says Evans.

Were the WASPs popular in the largely all-male world of the military?

"You bet we were," she says, grinning. "Gee, I call them boys now. They were men then."

They may have been men, but just ask Evans who was the best pilot she ever ran into.

"It was me," she says matter-of-factly. "You know, every pilot has an ego. I came on through it pretty good. I knew no fear."